.MOV files sluggish on Quicktime, but not on VLC Player

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.MOV files sluggish on Quicktime, but not on VLC Player

Hi,

I just bought a Sony Vaio Z laptop with Windows 7 64-bit and installed Quicktime 7.6.8 (64-bit). Whenever I play .MOV files on Quicktime, they're sluggish. They play at a framerate that's lower than the original. However, when I play them on VLC Player, they're as smooth as flowing water. Interestingly enough, .MP4 files ran smoothly on both programs. Why would .MOV files run sluggishly on a program that's supposed to be a native .MOV player?? Any suggestions on how I may remedy the matter? Thanks in advance!

Specs:
Sony Vaio Z with dynamic hybrid graphics system
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Intel Core i5 2.4GHz
4GB DDR3 DRAM
500GB 7200rpms Hard Disk
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with CUDA (with latest driver)

Sony Vaio Z, Windows 7, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Posted on Sep 28, 2010 12:46 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 28, 2010 2:39 PM in response to justin14

Use the Movie Inspector window of QuickTime Player to tell us more about these .MOV files.

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Answer 2

justin14 Author

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Sep 28, 2010 2:53 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Hi, here are the details of one of my .mov files. All my .mov files play sluggishly on Quicktime 7.6.8 but play well on the latest VLC Player.

Format: H.264, 1280x720, Millions of colors
FPS: 30
Rate: 3.85 Mbits/sec

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Answer 3

Sep 28, 2010 2:59 PM in response to justin14

There is no audio in these files?
QuickTime Player is designed to "drop" frames during playback if the viewing machine doesn't have enough CPU horsepower. I doubt your new machine does, however.
Open the QuickTime Control Panel. There are some settings you can adjust (check boxes).
Change some settings and then quit and relaunch QuickTime Player to test.

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Answer 4

justin14 Author

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Sep 29, 2010 10:17 AM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Which settings should I change? In the Advanced tab, Direct Draw and Direct 3D acceleration are activated. Thanks in advance!

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Answer 5

Sep 29, 2010 2:11 PM in response to justin14

Disable them both and test performance.

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Answer 6

justin14 Author

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Sep 29, 2010 2:28 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

There's no change in performance, unfortunately 😟 These .mov files used to run so smoothly on my Vista 32-bit laptop.

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Answer 7

E-Maniac

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Sep 30, 2010 12:09 PM in response to justin14

So far of what I know of there is no 64-bit version of quicktime. But I may be wrong. But 32-Bit software can have many performance issues if you do not have a version of the OS with 32-bit system backward compatibility package. However even with the package you can still have performance issues. Until a 64-bit version is released I'd stick to the VLC player. It maybe necessary to uninstall your 32-bit version when the 64-bit version is released since they are almost 2 different programs because of their coding format.

But yes, Quicktime is not the only software that is not yet adapted to the 64-bit stuff yet. 64-bit OS is still rather new and the transition is still happening. (9-9)

Message was edited by: E-Maniac

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Answer 8

justin14 Author

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Sep 30, 2010 2:10 PM in response to E-Maniac

Hi, thank you for your response. Actually, I was thinking if the issue was indeed Windows 7's 64-bit architecture, but surprisingly, I installed the same Quicktime version on a desktop computer that had Windows 7 32-bit and the .mov and .mp4 files still played sluggishly. Exactly the same sluggishness on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 machines. Now, there isn't a 64-bit version of VLC player, but how come it plays .mov and .mp4 files more smoothly?

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Answer 9

justin14 Author

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Sep 30, 2010 2:53 PM in response to justin14

Just a correction/clarification to my initial post. Both .mp4 and .mov files play sluggishly on Quicktime under Windows 7 (whether it be 32-bit or 64-bit). However, they both play well on VLC Player and Windows Media Player (which now supports both formats).

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